Consumers are increasingly using kiosks to conduct business with enterprises. The kiosks come in a variety of sizes and are used for a variety of purposes. Some kiosks are drive through, such as fast food establishments, pharmacies, banks, and the like. Other kiosks are stationary located in gas stations, airlines, grocery stores, department stores, and the like.
In addition, what is considered a kiosk is evolving with today's technology. For example, digital signs now provide advertisements and mechanisms for users to interact with the displays to perform transactions. Such mechanisms include blue tooth communication, Near Field Communication (NFC), Quick Response (QR) code scanning, Wi-Fi communication, and the like.
Consumers can even use their portable digital devices to perform transactions or interact with enterprise kiosks. One such popular approach is to distribute coupons to and redeem coupons from mobile phones. In fact, with public environmental concerns regarding the use of paper products and with the widespread adoption of smart phones and electronic transactions, the use of electronic coupons is becoming increasingly popular with both the consumers and the enterprises providing those electronic coupons.
Coupons are so popular with the buying public that entire social-networking sites and groups have evolved around coupon trading and advice. At one time, manufacturers entertained the idea of reducing the price of goods to eliminate coupons but backtracked based on the widespread popularity of coupon use.
One issue with coupons is that the coupons can be distributed from a wide variety of sources for a single product. For instance, a manufacturer may issue a coupon for a product and a local grocery store may issue its own coupon for the same product. When this situation happens, the actual price of the product can be reduced below zero, such that a consumer receives a credit for taking the product. Applying multiple coupons to a same product is referred to as “coupon stacking.”
Obviously, the manufacturer and local stores that sell the products do not desire to pay a consumer to take a product. For that matter, some manufacturers may desire that their product never be sold for below a minimum price regardless of coupons being redeemed.
It seems that everyone has jumped on the coupon bandwagon before technology was able to catch up with the resulting frenzy.